


La Petite Morte

by lesbrarians



Series: A Fucked Up Story [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Biting, Blood, F/M, Multishep Universe, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Renegade Shepard (Mass Effect), Robots, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 19:48:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19708210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbrarians/pseuds/lesbrarians
Summary: During one of their agreed-upon “meetings,” Ai shows Javik how wrong he is about the superiority of artificially intelligent machines.





	La Petite Morte

Ai was fond of rituals. If she was going to do something on a regular basis, it had to follow a certain formula.

And that included her encounters with Javik. 

After their first drunken tryst in the subdeck stairwell, she had sworn that she would never do anything so disgusting and debasing again. And yet, a few weeks later, she found herself feeling disconnected from the world around her and craving the kind of pain that grounded her in reality. So she had swallowed her pride and knocked on the door of the port cargo room, and they fell into an unspoken habit of showing up at the other’s quarters on a semi-regular basis.

Whenever Javik appeared at her door, Ai always insisted on following the same routine, and tonight was no different. The prothean stood in the center of the room while she systematically disinfected every surface. Not that it mattered much, since Javik wasn’t allowed to touch any of the furniture, asides from a lone chair in the back corner of the room. Still, it was an important part of the process, just like how she’d clean the room again afterwards.

“What is that?”

The question broke the routine, and she felt a twinge of irritation at the interruption. There was an unspoken rule that neither of them would talk more than was absolutely necessary, and he had broken it.

She straightened up to look at what Javik was staring at and found his gaze fixated on a metal sphere at the far end of the life support control room. Ai cursed herself for not thinking to hide her project. She wasn’t supposed to be careless like that. But Sam had already walked in on her elbow-deep in mechanical parts, and with the secret out to one of her two friends, she’d grown lenient about concealing the evidence.

She summoned up her omni-tool and activated the device, which came to life with a mechanical whir. The pod cracked open at the center, nine retractable legs extending and lifting the sphere off the ground. It trilled, surveying the room, before scuttling over to Javik. A ray of red light beamed out from the robot’s central eye, sweeping over Javik’s body. After the scan completed, it chirped twice, turning from side to side in apparent confusion before powering down with a dying hum.

“An enneapod,” she answered. “You’re lucky you’re the last of your kind. It doesn’t know how to respond to protheans. Yet. I may program it to kill on sight,” she added, her voice almost thoughtful.

Javik looked down at the deactivated machine with distaste. “You built this thing? Is it… intelligent?”

“Don’t insult me.” Ai’s withering expression dripped with contempt. “Of course it is.”

“Then you are an idiot,” Javik growled. “You gave birth to this flawed monstrosity.”

Ai’s fingers curled into a fist against her thigh. “There are no flaws.” Her voice was tight and perfectly controlled, but there was a hard edge to her restrained demeanor. “My machines are perfect.”

“Yes. Which is precisely why it is flawed. It knows it is perfect. You gave it consciousness, and it will realize that synthetic perfection is superior to the chaos of organic life. And it will act on that,” he finished emphatically.

“Do not tell me what my creations will or will not do. You know nothing about how machines work.”

“I know that creating an artificial consciousness has never ended well. Not in my cycle, and not in yours.”

“Allow me to reiterate: you know nothing,” she stated, locking eyes with him in an icy stare. This—” The enneapod stirred at the press of a holographic button and folded all nine of its legs beneath it to stand up. It scurried to Ai’s side, where it extended two long legs and scaled her body to perch on her shoulder. It was an awkward fit – the mechanical creature was too big for her narrow shoulder, but it still clung to her on all sides with its spidery metal legs. “This doesn’t have a blue box. It’s not an artificial intelligence, it’s a virtual intelligence. Without a quantum computer, it is physically impossible for it to achieve independent thought and make decisions of its own free will. The enneapod is fine.” She opted not to tell Javik about her grand plans to build a true AI that would serve as her legacy – this argument was strictly about her enneapods.

Javik remained unconvinced and unimpressed. “You are aware that all machines can turn on you? Even your VI can go rogue.”

“False,” she countered. “A VI can go rogue in one of two ways: through malicious tampering, or software malfunctions. If someone tries to tamper with it, the enneapod has ways of protecting itself, if I don’t kill the interloper in time. And I don’t leave room for software errors. Nothing I make has ever malfunctioned, and nothing will.”

Javik barely considered this for a second before scoffing. “You’re wrong,” he said derisively. “Throw it out the airlock.”

Blind fury flared inside of her. She despised being told she was wrong, especially when she knew she was right, as always. But anger was good – she appreciated it when someone could make her feel white hot emotion instead of cold indifference – and it reminded her of the real reason why Javik was here, at least on her end of things: to make her feel the physical sensation of pain.  
“Take your armor off before I change my mind,” she said, abruptly changing the subject. “You came to me; you need this. I don’t.”

“That is a lie.”

Ai didn’t argue the point. Partly because she had shown up at Javik’s door too many times to deny it, and partly because she had had enough talking for one day. She had talked more in the last ten minutes than she had all weekend, and she’d had enough. Instead, she nudged the enneapod off her shoulder, and it quickly crawled back to its home, where it reassumed its inconspicuous sphere shape.

Ai turned her back on Javik, signaling that she was done butting heads over differing opinions on mechanical life. She heard him turn around and start removing his elaborate armor, and just like that, they were back to their usual routine.

With order restored, Ai relaxed slightly. She methodically unbuttoned her high-collared tunic and folded it into neat fourths before placing the garment on her bunk. It had taken her a while to decide on wearing just the simple black tank top during these encounters. She preferred to cover herself up from the neck down, especially around other people, but after Javik destroyed her spare dress jacket, she realized that it was more practical to at least bare her arms. It made it easier for him to hurt her, and it eliminated the risk of someone finding a ripped and bloody article of clothing and asking awkward questions (she suspected that Kasumi had a habit of going through the ship’s laundry, and while she could on some level respect the ship’s other Japanese member, she did not want her prying into her dirty laundry).

Ai pulled out a black canvas case and unfolded it to reveal an assortment of kanzashi, most of which looked far more menacing than any hair ornament should. She skimmed over the row of hair sticks before selecting her newest set, the pair Javik had given her as a wordless peace offering after their first accidental affair had ended badly. The brass chopsticks were simple in design, reminiscent of prothean art in the decades prior to their extinction, when the empire was too busy fighting Reaper to care about aesthetics. She slid them out of their holster and stabbed them through the bun that was tightly wound on the top of her head.

She could still hear Javik disrobing behind her, so she took the opportunity to admire the rest of her hair ornaments. Decorative, but functional. She traced her finger over the ornate spirals and down the square edge of the first pair of chopsticks she had ever owned, stolen from the owner of the orphanage where she had spent the first seven years of her life. Some of her hair sticks concealed hidden blades, another pair secreted snake venom, but these iron spears had been carefully and repeatedly filed down into razor sharp points.  
It was so tempting to pocket them, but that would break their first rule governing these rendezvous: no weapons allowed. She would have to settle for fantasizing about shoving the sharp tip between two of the concentric segments of Javik’s genitalia. 

There was a final clank as Javik removed the last of his armor, and Ai turned around.

“Sit down,” she said, business as usual. She was looking up at his eyes, not his crotch, but the smug expression on his face as he sat down made her seriously reconsider. It also made her want to backhand the smirk off his face, but she restrained herself. She prided herself on having more control over her instinct to hit people than K. Shepard ever did.

“Ugh.” The noise was barely audible, but it spoke more about her present state of mind than any configuration of words ever could. “You disgust me,” she informed Javik, bracing one hand against the wall behind the chair.

“So you keep telling me, but that hasn’t stopped you from—”

“No.” She cut him off before he could finish the thought, punctuating the statement by lashing out and grabbing the base of his shaft.

Javik laughed, his snigger low and evil, and Ai would have been irritated, had he not chosen that moment to sink his claws into both of her shoulders.

The thick talons bore into her while the curved hooks between Javik’s legs simultaneously latched onto her hand, and _oh_ , the pain was positively exquisite. Sharp, stabbing sensation that reminded her that she was real and could still feel things, and it felt _good_.

Javik eased his grip on her, reminding her that she needed to reciprocate if she wanted the pain to continue. Jarred into complying, she squeezed hard enough to elicit an inhuman hiss out of him. It was gratifying to know that she wielded that much power over his reactions.

Ai made direct eye contact with him, knowing full well that he could read the malice in her glowing red eyes. Javik never was one to back down from a staring contest, and he unflinchingly met her gaze in return.

While his lower set of eyes remained fixated on Ai’s, the other pair wandered upwards. His gaze was predatory, leering at her glossy black hair with a single-minded desire.

Anyone else might have found it creepy, but Ai took a certain glee in shooting Javik down. “You are _never_ going to see me with my hair down,” she reminded him, a nasty smirk quirking her lips as she constricted her hand further.  
The prothean growled from somewhere in the back of his throat, a guttural, primal sound. He knew better than to argue the point, but he retaliated by dragging his claws down her shoulders, turning the puncture wounds into deep gouges.

If she had been a crasser person, she would have sworn. As it was, she simply grit her teeth and rode out the agony. When it faded to a manageable level, she focused on manipulating Javik into providing her with the exact level of sensation she desired.

Tighten, release, tighten, release. Pain, relief, pain, relief. Eventually, she relaxed her hand for a few long seconds, and Javik eased his claws out of her skin entirely – if she was going to deprive him of pleasure, he would do the same. She had the better end of the deal, however; even with Javik refusing to hurt her further, her shoulders tingled in the wake of his claws. She enjoyed the respite because it only made her more aware of the residual pain from the throbbing locations and the bead of blood that was trickling down her arm. She intended on waiting until Javik said something, but the claspers dug into her hand, his body unconsciously reacting to the lack of stimulation.

Ai glanced down at the barbed hooks. They didn’t allow for much movement, and definitely not of the vertical sort, which even she knew was typical for humans (knowledge that she had not sought out or ever desired, but EDI had seen fit to flood her omni-tool with explicit vids after she had tried hacking into classified Normandy files).

Still, Ai felt like trying something. She twisted her wrist as much as the claspers allowed, as if she could snap his alien dick off with one quick jerk.

She didn’t know what she had expected in response, but it wasn’t the lurch she received. Javik seized up, the motion completely unfamiliar to him, and hunched forward in the chair.

His face was alarmingly close to her shoulder, and she was about to say something about personal space when he lunged and sank his teeth into the side of her jawbone. 

If she hadn’t been so shocked, she would have been able to hold in the undignified gasp, but the unexpected bite shattered her usual expressionless mask. She tore her hand away from him, but without any warning, the hooks remained firmly lodged in her hand. The sound of ripping flesh was audible, twin gashes rending her skin. 

Her omni-tool was already activated, charged with incendiary power, and she lashed out at him with the back of her fist. But Javik wasn’t slow; he had anticipated her attack and met her swing with a bright green biotic blast that staggered her. 

The interruption cleared her mind, and she reined herself in before she got too carried away. She was incensed at the violation of her personal space and jarred by its suddenness, but she wasn’t murderous. Had she known that it was coming, the pain wouldn’t have been entirely unwelcome. Still, it offended her on principle, and she didn’t want to think about the possibility of a mark remaining, or the amount of bacteria that existed in Javik’s mouth.

She knew firsthand how much of a compulsive hand-washer he was, which was the only reason why she was amenable to the thought of his claws getting under her skin. She had no way of knowing where his teeth had been or what germs they brought with them, and the thought made her skin crawl.

“Do that again, and you’re the next notch on my arm,” she hissed, powering down her omni-tool.

The green glow that surrounded Javik dissipated as he lowered his barrier. “Consider it retribution for the burn you left on my throat last time.” He touched the corded red sinew on his neck, as if remembering the feel of the hot omni-blade pressing into it. 

Ai didn’t care. She narrowed her eyes, glowering at him beneath half-lidded eyelids. “Stand up and turn around,” she said.

Javik sneered at her. “I didn’t survive 50,000 years to die now, at the hands of a vertically challenged primitive. A prothean never turns his back on the enemy.”

“I turned my back on you earlier. Besides, if I planned on killing you _tonight_ ,” she said, placing the faintest emphasis on _tonight_ , because that word, like all of her words, was so carefully chosen, “I would have slit your throat before you took your ugly armor off. Turn. Around.”

Javik must have realized the truth in her words (that, or he just wanted to get back to their previous activities), because he let out a disgusted noise and got up from his seat to face the wall. 

With no warning whatsoever, Ai jammed her elbow into the small of his back, driving him into the wall. “I could still kill you like this,” she reminded him. “How embarrassing for you.”

“But you won’t,” Javik snarled, and Ai could tell his teeth were bared, even as she fixated her eyes on the back of his head. “Because you are weak.” He braced one arm against the wall and groped blindly behind him with the other. “You need this,” he finished, parroting her words from earlier.

Ai sucked in a sharp breath of air as his fingers found purchase, digging into her lower thigh, just above her knee. Warning bells were sounding in her head, screaming for her to forcibly remove the offending appendage.

Asides from the occasional bumped knee or crossed limb in the cramped confines of the boiler room where they frequently hid out with Sam, Javik had never dared touch her below the waist. She didn’t like it. 

“If you go any higher, you’re losing that hand,” she muttered, viciously seizing him with both hands. The claspers sank back into the raw flesh of her shredded hand, flagella squirming beneath her two-fisted grasp.

Javik tensed under her vice grip, and a heady rush of power surged straight to Ai’s head. She flexed her hands idly, wondering if she could snap him in two like this.

But that was a question for another day. She could tell Javik was close, based on his breathing and the activity beneath her hands. As much as she appreciated the physical sensation of pain, she wanted to end things so that she could inspect her jawline for damage. She squeezed as hard as she could, until Javik’s hooks hitched into her one final time before releasing their hold. Ai exhaled slowly, a slight shudder wracking her small frame as Javik’s claws retracted.

She let go of him, and they silently tended to themselves, Ai retreating to the other side of the room. Aftercare wasn’t even remotely a thing either of them was interested in. They had a wordless agreement to individually take care of their personal business before parting ways – as long as they both were sober, that was.

Ai touched her jaw but was unable to ascertain how bad the damage was. It would have to wait until after she cleaned herself up, her post-Javik rituals more important than ensuring her complexion wasn’t marred. She sanitized her hands before carefully cleaning her wounds, making sure they were thoroughly disinfected and free of blood. She applied a thin layer of medi-gel over everything, barring the gashes above her knee – she would wait until Javik was gone before stripping down further. When she was satisfied that everything was clean and in order, she allowed herself to pull up her omni-tool and activate its self-holo function. An orange beam scanned her face and produced a three-dimensional holographic image of her head, slowing herself to search for any blemishes.

And she could very clearly see the imprints Javik’s teeth had left behind, as well as the blossoming bruise that was spreading up the underside of her jaw. Even her highest-collared shirt couldn’t cover that up. She collapsed the projected holo and rounded on Javik, who was in the process of putting his elaborate armor back on.

“I can’t hide this,” she snapped, pointing at the bite marks.

“That sounds like a personal problem.” His face was neutral, but Ai knew him well enough to detect the faint undercurrent of amusement in his voice.

She stared at Javik for one long, terrible minute, her expression completely devoid of humor, and he locked eyes with her in a silent challenge. Finally, she broke the stalemate by diverting her gaze long enough to search for a certain panel on the wall behind her. Once she located it, she ripped it off the wall, fingers already dancing over the omni-tool’s holographic interface.

And the bite was suddenly worth it, just to see the look on Javik’s face when he heard the scraping of metal against metal, and realized that something inside the walls was moving.

The enneapod’s two completed sisters spilled out of the hole, closely followed by their predecessors, the failed prototypes that Ai had rejected as Not Good Enough. The latest version creaked to life to join its brethren, its glowing red eye searching the room until it landed on Javik and beeped three times: target locked.

There was a momentary flash of fear in Javik’s eyes, which was quickly covered up by his usual irascibility.

“I’m leaving,” he said, snapping his armor’s shoulder piece back on.

“Good,” Ai replied calmly, clasping her hands behind her back and tilting her chin up. The mechanical creatures advanced on Javik, who left the room without another word.

Ai allowed herself a small smirk of satisfaction, which quickly disappeared as her jaw twinged. She brushed her fingers against the bruise and huffed in disgust. With a wave of her arm, she powered down the devices and set about getting changed.

After dressing the wounds above her knee, she pulled on a high-necked tunic, its mandarin collar nearly up to her chin, and a pair of long black gloves. If it wasn’t for the slight limp and the bite mark, you wouldn’t be able to tell that anything had happened. She could hide one of them as long as she grit her teeth and trained her body not to respond to the injury. The other, not so much.  
She needed help, as much as it pained her to admit it, and there was only one person whom she could ask.

She perched on the edge of her cot and picked up her datapad, pulling up the log of her communications with Samantha Shepard and starting a new message. She drummed her fingers against its surface, contemplating her words. She decided on not offering an explanation (she knew that Sam knew about her and Javik’s get-togethers, along with what happened during them, but none of them ever brought it up) and simply typed: “My quarters. Now.”

It took Sam longer than Ai had anticipated to arrive. She was about to check the cameras she had installed around the ship when the proximity sensor near her door buzzed. She unlocked the door to let Sam in, fully prepared to make some quietly scathing comment about how long it took her to get there, but she stopped short when she saw that the other girl had come prepared with makeup in her hands.

“Wow,” Sam said, the word slipping out in spite of herself when she spotted the bruise. “He really got you.”

Ai gave her a look that said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ “Fix it,” she said out loud, sitting back down on the edge of her bed. For that smartass comment, she didn’t offer Sam a place to sit as well. 

Thankfully, she knew not to touch Ai’s furniture without express permission, and instead crouched down in front of her.

“You knew,” Ai stated as Sam began holding various bottles of foundation up to her face, trying to find a shade that wasn’t too jarring next to her sickly pale skin. Ai realized that there was no way that any of Sam’s makeup would even come close to matching her skintone – she must have visited Tiffany before coming up to Life Support. Suddenly her tardiness made sense.

“Yeah,” Sam replied, sealing the bite marks before beginning to apply concealer over the area. “Bugmug wasn’t in his room. I had EDI check for your heat signatures, and you both were in here without me. Of course I knew.”

“Ugh.” Ai fell silent, uncomfortable with where the conversation was going.

Sam hummed to herself as she worked, bracing herself on Ai’s shoulder. It was amazing how far they’d come from their early days together, where Ai never would have let Sam touch her so familiarly.

“There!” Sam finally said pilling away to admire her handiwork. She help up a compact mirror, and Ai examined her reflection. The teeth marks and bruising were nigh invisible, concealed by a layer of expertly applied and blended makeup. Her pride and dignity were salvaged, her shame concealed from view thanks to Sam’s skilled hand, and a rare prickle of affection twinged somewhere deep inside of her.

For a fleeting, foolish second, Ai considered succumbing to the pang of fondness and saying something along the lines of “You’re a good friend, Samantha” – and then she felt nauseous and promptly squashed that ridiculous notion, burying it under her usual apathy. 

Instead, she snapped the mirror shut and handed it back. “Thank you,” she said simply, and _that_ was another huge change from the inception of their friendship – there was a time when burning hot coals couldn’t drag those words out of Ai’s throat, but now she found herself saying them of her own volition (begrudgingly or otherwise) and worse, _meaning_ them.

Sam smiled at her, and Ai was pretty sure she saw a knowing glint in those deep brown eyes. Sometimes there were things that didn’t need to be said to be understood between them. “You’re welcome,” she answered.

Ai returned the smile with a small, quick one of her own and scooted down the bed, patting the now empty space.

Touched by the gesture, Sam sat down next to her with a certain reverence, careful not to disturb the crisp folds of the sheets. “So tell me the truth,” she began, nodding at the circle of deactivated machines that was still in the center of the room. “Just how badly did Javik shit himself when saw those things?”


End file.
